Firms still reeling from Petya cyberattack

The Petya ransomware attack that took place on June 27 crippled thousands of systems worldwide including countries like the US, the UK and Ukraine. It let serious consequences on some businesses which are still struggling to return operations to normal.

Health and hygiene firm Reckitt Benckiser- known for Dettol cleaning products, Nurofen tablets, Durex condoms and more-has warned ransomware attack could cost it £100m in revenue. The health and consumer goods company fell victim to Petya on the day of the global ransomware attack, and days later some key applications remain only partially operational and a number of facilities are still not fully operational.

A terminal of India’s largest port JNPT was also partially affected by the attack.

Nuance Communications, which provides transcription software for medical professionals, has slowly been bringing its products back online. But one IT worker told the BBC that two US hospitals were still having issues.

FedEx’s delivery subsidiary TNT Express was hit by the global cyberattack and is still working to return systems to normal.

The wave of malware infections that unfolded during the Petya cyber-attack appeared to begin in Ukraine at the end of June.

Since then, about £8,000 of ransom payments in Bitcoin have been moved from a digital wallet – but it is still not known who was behind the attack.

Very few Petya victims paid the cyberattackers the ransom — and those who did appear to have done so for no reason as the cyberattack doesn’t appear to even allow the hackers to recover lost data.

Some have even speculated that the ransomware note was just a cover for the real goal of the virus — to cause mayhem by irrecoverably wipe data from infected machines.